


When a star is born, they possess a gift or two

by DarkmoonSigel



Series: The Notes Played In Between [45]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Comedy, Falling In Love, Flirting, Funny, Gay, Gay Bar, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Romance, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 17:46:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12370806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkmoonSigel/pseuds/DarkmoonSigel
Summary: Kind of working with the movies but not. Nigel gets divorced instead of dying. Adam lives in Portland, Oregon instead of California.It's just a fun little story about flirting and falling in love.





	When a star is born, they possess a gift or two

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Still alive!  
> I work in a drag bar. You got a story from that.  
> Bruno is quite real, though obviously renamed. I work with him.

California was chosen because it was the furthest place from Romania when Nigel decided it was time for him to go somewhere else that was not Romania. So to California Nigel went. Everything had gone south after Gabi so he decided maybe it was time for him to give up the game. His ex-wife, and wasn’t that a skimming kick to the balls, hurting more than it should to think or say such a thing...

His ex-wife... 

His ex-wife had her father’s video tape. That dead son of gypsy pig, Victor, had given it to that cunt Bella who in turn had given it to Gabi. Wasn’t life grand? So it was decided that Nigel would divorce Gabi, leaving her to oily fuckboy lover Charlie Countryman, and Nigel would leave Europe while the getting was good. Sending his own little curse out into the universe, Nigel held out hope that Charlie would give Gabi some incurable STD.

After selling off his part of the business to Darko, Nigel tried to settle down in San Francisco. The city was diverse enough that he wouldn’t stand out, and even if he did, San Francisco was weird enough that no one would give a fuck. Californian had not been his idea. Nigel would have opted for something closer, Madrid or even Rome, but he wasn’t the one who had royally fucked up so he didn’t get to choose. No, California had been Darko’s pick because his former partner-in-crime had a sadistic sense of humor.

In Nigel’s opinion, L.A. was a ring of hell on earth full of people so fake they could have been Christmas ornaments made of painted-on fake faces and plastic infused meat. After about a week, Nigel had to leave the City of Angels for good. He was going to start shooting people over gluten, whatever the fuck that was. No one seems to know, but they didn’t want it in anything. All Nigel knew was that it had something to do with bread. Thousands of years of humans surviving on bread and yet now apparently, everyone was allergic to the stuff. Nigel was going to do terrible, awful things if he heard one more person bitch about it though.

San Francisco was disappointing, especially after hearing all the hype about it for years. Nigel had been told it is supposed to be like the American version of Budapest, but with more rainbow flags. Sky high rent and yuppy scum had sterilized the once vibrant city scene though, leaving Nigel bored to tears while feeling very out of place. He needed some place, a town where he could still get into a little bit of trouble, just enough to keep him entertained.

Traveling upward along the coast on his way to Seattle, Nigel finally found that place in Portland, Oregon. It was definitely a weird city, but Nigel hadn’t seen the ass end of normal in decades so he was just fine with that. He never made it to Washington State because of it. 

As far as his personal funds were concerned, Nigel was set for life so he didn’t have to work, but he wanted to anyway. Nigel was superstitious enough to believe that the Devil worked through idle hands, and his hands were the kind that got into all sorts of sin if he didn’t keep them occupied. Always on speaking terms with serendipity, Nigel ended up with a job where he least expected it, in a place he would have never considered. When he told Darko about it, his old friend was torn between laughing his ass off, and having an aneurysm.

“Who the fuck would hire you? Do they not know you are complete shit at bar?” Darko practically yelled into the phone.

“How hard is it? I can slap some shit in a glass.” Nigel shrugged with a grin. Like most things in his life, this had all just sort of fallen into his lap.

“No. No, you can’t, you dumb chain-smoking monkey! That’s why you weren’t allowed behind the bar here.” Darko said, glaring at Nigel’s picture since the real version wasn’t here to bitch at in person. “There was a reason I threatened to feed you to my dogs if you tried to step foot behind the bar.”

“I provide ambiance and charming conversation, or so I’m told.” Nigel said, quite pleased with himself. A bar fight had gotten him a job and a place to live, his new digs over his new place of work.

“The voices in your head don’t count. You poison people. Mixers aren’t just for coloring.” Darko said, grumping in his chair. Perhaps sending Nigel off to the other side of the world hadn’t been such a good idea after all, but a deal was a deal. If he hadn’t married and had a kid, it could have very well been him to fall for some bad luck cunt. 

“It’s not my fault other people don’t have a discerning palette like mine.” Nigel said, opening his window so that he could smoke. Bruno, his new boss and landlord, was just fine with smoking whatever he wanted as long as he exhaled outside. 

“Discerning palette? Did you fuck a dictionary on the flight over there? What the fuck do you know about taste? You drink straight liquor and smoke like a chimney. You tongue has been dead for years.”

“Your wife never complained.” Nigel grinned around his cigarette. 

“I weep for your bar manager, and the monetary loss he is about to experience.” Darko said flatly, already running the numbers in his head.

“Fuck off. They love me here.” Nigel said, which was surprisingly true. His odd little puzzle piece shape seemed to fit right in here with the rest.

“No one loves you.” Darko asked. He really couldn’t imagine who the hell would hire Nigel on the spot with all his tattoos and inborn aura of evil. “Dare I ask? Are they stupid, crazy, or both?”

“Gay actually. I work at a gay bar called Stag’s Leap.” 

“...”

“Hello?”

“You work at a gay bar.”

“Yes.”

“You?”

“Yes. Are you finally going deaf in your old age?”

Weird inhuman noises started to come out of phone, loud enough that Nigel had to hold the phone away from his ear while he finished his cigarette. It was roughly the kind of reaction he was expecting. 

“Try not to shit yourself laughing, you prick.” Nigel told the phone from a safe distance.

“So do you suck cock for tips, or do you just take it in the ass for fun?” Darko managed out between bouts of laughter. “What do they say out there? Gay for pay?”

“Get it out of your system.” Nigel sighed.

“Do you wear glitter to work?” Darko started to say, but the rest was lost in translation. Darko’s mental visual of Nigel working at his new job set him off all over again. 

“Are you done?” Nigel asked to get more gibberish in answer. Apparently not, Nigel hanging up on Darko. He had to go to work anyway. 

Work was at the Stag’s Leap, a little hole in the wall bar with some rooms for rent over it. Nigel had wandered in, not knowing what kind of bar it was, although in retrospect, the rainbow flags hanging over the door should have been a dead giveaway. Nigel had just been looking for a drink in some place that was dark and the right kind of noisy for him. The last few bars he had been to were too bright and new, serving things called ‘craft cocktails’. Nigel was having none of that sort of shit. 

Stag’s Leap was mellow, the interior all dark wood and aged brass. The bar stools were comfortable, and there wasn’t one craft cocktail menu in sight, just rows and rows of liquor behind the bar and plenty of beer on tap. The music was loud enough to be heard, but low enough so that conversation could carry on. The bartender was a little too friendly with him, but Nigel could live with that. He had just settled in when things went to hell.

Three drunks wandered into the bar, which usually was fine and even a little expected, but they were the kind of drunks that were looking for trouble, the trio sounding ignorantly ugly. After a lifetime of being a very bad man, Nigel could just tell. It was all going to go sideways real quick so now he had to decide if he wanted to stay for a free show, or if he should close out his tab and head out before it all went pear-shaped. 

It was decided for him when the drunks threw an empty bottle at the bartender’s head. It missed, but that sort of shit didn’t sit well with Nigel so he decided he needed to get some exercise. By the time he was done with the drunks, Nigel was warmed up, limber with adrenalin, and feeling really good about life as he threw the trio bodily one by one out the bad door. The bartender, Bruno, was so grateful and impressed that he offered Nigel a job on the spot. As the conversation progressed, Nigel ended up with a place to live as well, the bartender also being the owner of the establishment and the building. 

“Time to earn your keep, stud.” Bruno said, smacking Nigel’s ass as soon as the Romanian clocked in. Nigel groaned as he watched a bachelorette party pile in through the door, Bruno strutting off to miraculously found something else to do that didn’t involve him staying up front or anywhere near the shrieking women. “Now, go sashay that tight little ass over there, and remind us all why we love the Eurotrash fantasy.”

The ladies sounded like they were well on their way to holding a lot of hair back. “We need shots!” was their battle cry. In Nigel’s opinion, it was also what a bad idea sounded like.  
“There’s my cue.” Nigel snorted, unbuttoning his shirt a few down before swaggering over.

“Go get them, and get them the hell out before the rush.” Bruno sighed. The bridal party was not alone though, one single man with them, the poor bastard. By the looks of it, Nigel decided the guy must be the group’s designated driver and mother hen. He didn’t look drunk. 

If Nigel had to guess, the guy looked kind of quietly miserable as he allowed himself to be shoved into a corner by the over-exuberant bridesmaids and their penis crown wearing bride-to-be. While he flirted his way through the women and made them shots, Nigel kept an eye on the man with the dark curls and blue eyes that never met his own. The ladies squared away for now with lemon drop martinis and cosmos, Nigel edged his way over to the wallflower. 

“Well, hello there, gorgeous.”

“Adam. My name is Adam.”

“Can’t it be both?”

“Y-yeah. Um, we...could you get us some more shots?” Adam stammered, “Expect for me. I don’t want a shot. I don’t like them.”

“You the DD?” Nigel asked as he mixed up a round of Bootie Calls for the group. He looked up to see a blank look on Adam’s face. “The designated driver, the DD.”

“I don’t drive.” Adam said, dutifully passing out the shots.

“So, you just along to look pretty?”

“Beth wanted me to come so I did.”

“One of them your girlfriend?” Nigel asked, really hoping that this Adam was the group’s token gay.

“Beth is my ex-girlfriend. She is the one wearing all the penises.” Adam said, nodding to the woman who had raided Party City for everything phallic shaped and pink. 

“Classy.” Nigel snorted. In his opinion, Adam had dodged a bullet with that one. 

“We parted amicably though. She’s the one getting married."

“I kind of figured that out for myself. The penis crown is a dead giveaway.” Nigel grinned, leaning over the bar so that he was in Adam’s personal space. It made the man look over at him with those amazing eyes of his. “Nice to know that you’re single.”

“Why is that nice to know?” Adam asked, looking honestly perplexed. There was an innocence about the man that intrigued Nigel. Apparently it was alluring to others too, Nigel hearing Bruno coming out of hiding. 

“Because I hate competition.” Nigel said, kicking Bruno in his shin as the other bartender came to close. 

“You’re terrible!” Bruno yelped.

“The worst.” Nigel said, his eyes never leaving Adam’s own.

“Don’t you dare pick on that poor little lamb.” Bruno said, ignoring Nigel. It was noted that Bruno maintained a careful distance while pretending to polish glassware. “Honey, you’d better run. Nigel is the big bad wolf. He’ll eat you up, bones and all.”

“So when are you going to go out with me?” Nigel grinned, leaning in so he could look into very pretty grey blue eyes, probably for the last time before Adam left this bar for good. 

“When are you going to ask?” was the unexpected reply. It kind of left Nigel a little stunned. 

“Oh sassy! I live.” Bruno laughed, snapping his fingers in what Nigel hoped was encouragement. “Maybe this wolf just bit off more than he can chew.”

“I don’t understand the correlation between anything you are saying.” Adam told Bruno before turning to Nigel, “He keeps calling you a wolf. You are not a furry are you? While I am not opposed to role playing, I don’t get sexual aroused from yiffing, and I don’t like talking animals.”

“I don’t know what the fuck yiffing is, so you’re safe, gorgeous. We’ll just have to find something else to get you aroused.” Nigel said, throwing a bar towel at Bruno’s head to make him go away now that he was making some headway with Adam. “Don’t you have something better to do, you cockblocking dipshit?”

“Nope.” Bruno smirked.

“SHOTS!” roared the bachelorette party, the sound of which Nigel was instantly grateful for, probably for the first and last time in his life.

“Oh fuck me sideways.” Bruno sighed. “You’re lucky I like you. That, and your angel lamb baby isn’t my type.”

“He’s a very strange man.” Adam said, staring off into space.

“You have no idea.”

“A lamb is a baby sheep. There is no reason to say ‘baby’ after ‘lamb’. It’s redundant...”

And that was the part where Darko lost the ability to speak in English again, or any language really. Holding the phone away from his ear, Nigel wondered why he bothered telling Darko anything. He hung up before Darko demanded any details about his date with Adam. Throwing the phone on top of his crumpled jeans on the floor, Nigel crawled back into bed. Barely stirring, Adam curled up into his side like he was meant to be there. They seemed to fit together, like two oddly shaped puzzle pieces. 

No, Darko didn’t need to know how well the date had gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Your comments are demanding shots, and your kudos are sipping their drinks through a penis shaped straw.


End file.
